Following a ruling by the Stockholm District Court in 2009 which banned two Pirate Bay founders from running the site, Hollywood says it's time for them to pay up. The movie companies say they are confident that Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm are still operating The Pirate Bay and therefore they should each pay their 500,000 kronor fines.

In 2009, the founders of The Pirate Bay lost their court battle against the music and movie industries. Despite receiving heavy sentences, their site continued to operate and the appeals process could drag on for years yet.

Determined not to wait for this process to play out before crippling the site, in May 2009 music companies Universal, EMI, Sony and Warner applied to the courts for fines to be imposed on Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde for as long as they continue to infringe their copyrights through the operation of the site.

In July 2009, this lead was followed by the movie industry with Columbia, Disney, NBC, Paramount, Sony, 20th Century Fox, Universal and Warner taking legal action against the same three individuals in Stockholm, demanding that the court stops the site from continuing to infringe their copyrights on more than 100 named movies and TV shows.

In common with the music industry action, the Hollywood studios also named The Pirate Bay’s bandwidth supplier, Black Internet AB, although that ISP is no longer involved with the site and is now presumably excluded from the action. However, there was another line of attack for the entertainment industries.

At the end of October 2009, the Stockholm District Court ruled that two of the site’s founding members – Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij – were now banned from operating the site in the future. If they failed to comply with this decision, they would face a fine of 500,000 kronor ($71,600) each.

Earlier this year the record companies wrote to the Stockholm District Court demanding that the penalties for the pair continuing to run the site were imposed. In a new application, the movie companies are also insisting that the Court makes good on its threats. But as with all things Pirate Bay, there are complications.

Not only do Fredrik and Gottfrid live outside Swedish jurisdiction, both of them insist that they have nothing to do with the running of The Pirate Bay anymore. They say they transferred the site to Seychelles-based company Reservella in 2006. Needless to say, the entertainment companies don’t believe a word of it and insist that the founders are still running the site.

“Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm Warg should easily be able to present evidence showing that it is as they claim, namely that there are other people who took over control and operation of The Pirate Bay. They have not done so,” say the studios in the application.

In any event, what is clear is that in the eyes of the studios, little has changed, even after The Pirate Bay shut down its tracker last year.

“This change has no impact on file-sharing service function,” they conclude.

At this stage it is unclear where the burden of proof lies. Is it up to the founders to prove that they aren’t involved with the site, or is it up to the studios to prove that they are? If it’s the latter, this could be the hardest job in the whole world – even harder than the founders proving a negative.